Friday, June 17, 2011

Why Watershed is Different

Here are six reasons:

1. I'm in the early stages. I always love the early stages -- when you're learning like crazy and you don't know what it will become.

2. A band of peers. You can't take away any of these parts and make it work. Many of my past bands were all interchangeable parts with me being the only constant. I like a constant of three at the core instead of one.

3. I'm being honest. I wrote music for Christians, for God,for people outside the church. Then I just wrote whatever I wanted and quit playing live. I got to this album and picked what fit together. They are songs about what matters most to me -- a lot of which has to do with God. We play it wherever -- bars, churches -- and see what happens.

4. It's cool and passionate. Being on stage playing rock and roll -- there is a distance between you and the rest of the band and the audience. This is "coolness." At the same time you throw yourself completely into what you're doing -- and sometimes the audience does too. This is the heat. It's a strange mix of distance and zeal. Great juxtaposition.

5. You don't have to talk. Part of why I like writing music is that I get to experience and communicate something that goes beyond words (although it includes words it uses them in a different way -- creating images, textures, emotions, a space -- rather than just saying something directly). As a singer songwriter your personality and your words a big part of why people listen to you, or how they listen to you. You can be an inarticulate rock star -- or poet. 6. Dancing on the cliff -- occasionally. I'm finding I can express things with electric guitar that I couldn't on the acoustic. On solos I want to tread the edge of what works -- the edge of melody, rhythm/timing, etc -- I love it when it feels like it is almost falling apart but it isn't. I want these moments surrounded by the solid, steady, powerful, loud unity of the rest of the songs.

7. I didn't do it all by myself.I love to create and work with others. It was bigger than I could handle from the beginning and I got the help I needed as I went. Once the producer and I discovered the focus for the project, he was responsible to keep us on track. That freed me up to focus on my individual parts. We created something together that surpassed my ideas or my vision, something that I really like. Many times my collaborations have created something less stunning than what I could do myself. Not this time. We were all surprised by what we created, we are all thankful to be a part of it.

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About Me

A love for the arts, connecting people and seeing them grow is behind much of what I do. Songwriting is my main artistic focus and has been part or all of my income for many years. Leadership development work with small emerging organizations has been most of the rest. Some friends and I started the Dandelion Seed Company artists network to help artist grow. We have been very small and organic for a decade and are now expanding.